Evans, Arthur J.: The Palace of Minos: a comparative account of the successive stages of the early Cretan civilization as illustred by the discoveries at Knossos (Band 3): The great transitional age in the northern and eastern sections of the Palace (London, 1930)

HELLENIC SPHINX OF THEBES

417

father Laios in the ' Hollow Way' (a-xi<TTV °S6s), seems to be recorded on an
intaglio of the same set—could have been thus suddenly implanted on
Boeotian soil ?

These scenes clearly refer to some episode in the local folklore long

Fig. 281. Restored Sketch of Ivory Sphinx : Deposit of Ivories.

connected with the spot. The monster who in later days haunted the wild
rocky range—the ' Sphingion Oros '—that shuts in Thebes on the North, and
of which the Sphinx on the jewelJ already seems to appear as the guardian,
was surely old established on the spot. In its artistic Minoan form, indeed,
it is clearly an exotic importation—but may it not have been fitted on to
some old indigenous shape ?

In this connexion, as I have ventured to point out elsewhere,2 it is Name of
a highly suggestive fact that, though an Egypto-Minoan Art form was thus Hellenic :

art form

1 The upper curve of the intaglio shows
a border of rocks.

See The Ring of Nestor, pp. 29, 30.

Minoan.

III.

E e